Hope & Truth Ministry
Be hope, be love, live with truth.
For the wondering, the doubting, the hurting, and the hopeful. For people without a congregation, and for people who have found theirs but want another voice on the road. You are welcome here.
From the lectionary
Recent reflections
Sermons and reflections in keeping with the Revised Common Lectionary. New writing arrives most weeks.
July 24, 2026
Heaven is Doing - Matthew 13 - Proper 12A
Preached on the weekend of RAGBRAI end, this sermon reads the parables of Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 — the mustard seed, the yeast, the hidden treasure, the pearl, and the dragnet — alongside Romans 8:26-39 and Psalm 119:129-136, using the community of a week-long bike ride as a picture of the kingdom. Tony E Hansen resists the familiar impulse to hear the dragnet as a tool for sorting the saved from the lost, insisting instead that the net pulls up everyone: all are selected, all are called to God's purpose, and heaven is less a place in the clouds than an active, caring, collecting way of life — heaven is doing. With Paul's assurance that "if God is for us, who is against us," the call is to leave judgment to God, use our gifts for one another, and belong to a community that includes the great and the small, the queer, the questioning, and the addict finding their way.
July 10, 2026
Parables - Matthew 13 - Proper 10A
Taking up Jesus's Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23) alongside Romans 8:1-11 and Psalm 65, this sermon resists the temptation to sort people into the saved and the lost, hearing instead an honest description of the many ways we receive God's Word. Tony E Hansen names the soils that choke growth — the lure of wealth and status, the impatience of a consumer culture primed to "have it our way," and the avoidance of the discomfort that is itself a necessary teacher — against the corporate lie that we can have it all without struggle. The good news is that God offers a field of opportunity and a life of purpose apart from those fleeting comforts: you are a seed planted and tended by the Creator, already loved and given everything you need.
July 4, 2026
All Who Are Weary - Matthew 11 - Proper 9A
Preached on the weekend of the United States' 250th birthday, this sermon takes up Jesus's invitation to "all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens" (Matthew 11:11-30), reading it alongside Romans 7:15-25 and Psalm 145 to name both the visible and hidden burdens people carry — caregiving, labor, trauma, addiction, and the internal "war with the self." Drawing candidly on his own experience with addiction and with coming to terms with being queer in a conservative religious family, Tony E Hansen challenges the toxic models of masculinity and religion that shame the inner self, insisting with the Psalmist that God is gracious, merciful, and "good to all" without exception. The call is to end the internal violence, receive the rest Christ offers, and become peacemakers and merciful ones for one another.